I’ve sat here for an hour and half and deleted words, closed documents, switched over to reading books and now I’m back again.
The image that keeps coming into my brain tonight are all the people who moved through the night to see the baby Jesus. Now, I know historically, it wasn’t during December, who knows if it was cold; but all I can see is their breath on the air as the moved through the night to get to the manger.
Their breath moving in front of them, as they walked to meet the baby that would change everything.
And all I can think of our the words I wrote when my mom passed. That even though we were devastated she was gone, she was finally able to breathe again.
I think for the last three years I haven’t been breathing.
I mean I have obviously, been breathing. I’ve been living, moving forward, making choices, trudging through sickness, maneuvering through grief.
But, I’ve realized, that this holiday season I just want to breathe.
It sounds so simple, so cliche’.
People say they want to have breathing room, have space to breathe. That they just need to take a breath.
To me breath is more than space and room.
It’s being alive in a different way than I used to be.
One of the collection of words I deleted simply stated that I feel like I’ve failed this year.
But, really, I think I’ve just been holding my breath in hopes that it would make a difference. That when I came up for air there would be clarity.
And now, this span of time of holidays, I just want to breathe. I want to take deep breathes to my toes.
I know these words don’t feel very holiday. They feel stilted and tired.
These words need to breathe.
So that’s where I am this Sunday before Christmas.
Usually that isn’t the case. I might not like the word, but I see the good things that come from it and I can understand.
Not this year.
On Sunday, I was sitting in church and I was like “ok god, let’s be done. Let’s wrap this one up like a bow.”
And he said “nah, I’m good.”
Because, again, I have to keep going.
And no matter what that’s going to be the case. I’m always going to keep meeting places I’ve been before.
Again and again.
I thought this year would have more answers than it has. I thought maybe it would hold something.
And really, it has held a lot.
It’s still held more than I can even comprehend I know.
Usually, at this point in the year I feel like we’re starting to coast to the finish line.
Like I have a grasp and I start to understand what the baton in the relay race is going to look like.
But, right now, I can’t even see the baton. I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know if I’m even still moving towards the finish line.
It kind of feels like I’m playing Mario kart with the Steiners and I’m just choosing to go off course because it’s easier.
This year has honestly made me feel like I don’t know who I am at all.
And has made me feel like I know exactly who I am at the same time.
Because I knew this year, each thing I met, I had met before. I knew that each moment where I felt like I was walking through fire, I had walked through it before.
I had done it before so I can do it again.
And because of all of that; I stopped seeing that as a threat.
When I think about the labyrinth and how Sarah, the main character, is utilizing the book she has that is the story of the labyrinth to get through she must feel as if she’s been there before. She knew the book so well that it must have felt a bit like she had been there before.
And there were places in the maze she went to again and again.
She was caught in the place of either moving forward and or allowing herself to “rest” in a place that at one point in the journey been safe.
But the journey moved her forward.
The journey has kept moving me forward.
The things I’ve had to unearth even in just the last stretch of time that have been a reminder to me that my worth is not based on what I do.
That I’m not the glue, even when it feels like if I allow myself to let go control it will all crumble.
It causes me to sit on a street corner in Brasov, Romania across from Betsy Garmon as she leans in to tell me, remind me, implore me that I don’t have to be the glue.
It’s almost as if, I’m still making my way toward the Goblin King.
I haven’t had the chance to tell him he has no power over me.
The really interesting thing about most of my formative teen years being spent in a church is that I have this very weird viewpoint of when I look at something through the lens of the late 90s- Early 2000s church.
When I hear certain phrases and they take me back to a cheesy worship song, or a quote or something that was drilled into my brain again and again.
One of my best friends and soul sisters, Joanna, and I have been through a master class in letting go this year. It comes at us from every direction, at every angle, amidst newsletters, emails, on instagram, on sundays. The message over and over, again and again: we need to let go.
Sometimes the letting go is obvious. Letting go of comparison, or frustration, letting go of hurt or expectations. Sometimes the letting go is up in the clouds, things that feel not real but are usually more real than we’d care to admit. But, big or small, the letting go is never easy. Clinched fists and echos of things that feel like facts that make the letting go feel like it doesn’t need to happen.
The last sunday words I wrote were about un-gripping from hope and letting it do its magic. I’ve been in a bit of a daze about how to go about that.
Trying to figure out how to allow myself hope and light and joy. Trying to figure out how to let hope in.
Like I said, Joanna and I have had billboards every week about letting go and today she sent me an instagram that contained the words “Let go to let in”. And to circle back to the beginning of these words I was automatically taken back to high school youth group, to people in college, to words in church telling me I just needed to surrender and all the good things would come flooding into my life.
Also, let’s cut the crap and realize that all those moments, “all the good things” was a man.
But, I’ve been doing this christian and church thing for almost 25 years and I can very much tell you becoming a Christian and “surrendering” doesn’t make gold fall from the sky. Or lumberjack looking men show up behind you at a coffee shop and pick up the things that fell from your purse.
So, today, when I saw those words all I could think about was this: what do I want to let in? Joanna’s four year old daughter, my sweet and sassy niece Leo, wiser than all the people who pray the demons out of places, simply says this: if it’s good, let it come in.
And those words make me wonder-all those times in high school youth group and through college and small groups and everything in between; did I ever know what I actually wanted to come in. We all have our lists. Our things we want and need. Our ideal partners, the best job, a house. A Beauty and the beast library with a ladder. But what about the abstract?
What about the words that live up in the clouds. The words that make you stand taller, walk with confidence. Speak with the ability to know you can back it all up. How do you let all that in?
How do you move past a faith that always told you that the good things God brought were tangible and physical, into one that you know, which is a faith where the good things are simple, and not so simple, just you letting go and letting in to become who you were meant to be?
I think it’s so funny how everything in our life has to be a tangible. The house, the job, the man, the library with a ladder. But what about letting in the things that make you realize that the house, the job, the man, the library with a ladder don’t actually matter.
What about letting in the fact that the minute you decided screw waiting for a wedding gift and you were going to buy your own damn kitchen aide; you had two in a week. What about letting in that what you bring to the table isn’t something you hold in your hands. It’s just who you are.
I know that I come across as a confident, know what I’m about, bad ass bitch. That’s what I bring to the table. But damn, sometimes letting that all in is really hard when it feels like the table is covered in the magazine clippings of all the reasons I am not any of it.
This past year has honestly been as if someone took the previous years of my life and just handed me the bookmarks of what has been and said: ok let’s try that again. Again and again.
So, tonight, I’m saying outwardly, to the universe, to whatever is listening: I’m choosing to allow the good in. I’m choosing to allow myself to bring hope, light, joy and peace to the table. I don’t have to hold it in my hands. I just am.
So I’m gonna let that in. I’m not going to feel shame or guilt about not feeling enough because the “tangible things” aren’t coming. I’m going to continue to let go to let in.
(and honestly, I’m gonna build my own damn library) With love, Meg
I am not ready for whatever comes at the end of these words.
As I’ve said; again and again, I write to untangle.
I start at the beginning with words, or a phrase or a reference to the labyrinth or something Hannah Brencher wrote or something my pastor said in church (or honestly just during the work week) that pissed me off because I had to agree with it with gritted teeth.
And then I write.
Currently I feel that if I begin to untangle I might lose it all.
I feel, as if I am hanging onto my sanity with an absolute death grip.
That means, for today, it’s Hannah Brencher.
She does a series of notes for every month and there is always one or two that I latch onto.
For lovely words and truth; @ Hannah Brencher
I know that I know that I know I’m supposed to be letting go.
I can physically feel how tightly wound I am, how I’m still terrified at giving hope a chance.
Because if I can’t control it; who will.
(I know I’m freaking digging a deep hole with these words for my week but here we are).
Truthfully, I haven’t been eating really. I haven’t been sleeping.
I’ve been in survival mode for longer than I care to admit.
The bags under my eyes have their own bags and no amount of concealer can help.
(I also know none of this will be surprising to my best friend).
October was rough with ghosts and dates and memories of what once was. Then during nap time at work the day before Halloween, a text that friend had suddenly passed surprised and shocked me, shook me up.
Solidifying to me that nothing good ever happens in octobers.
I realized this morning standing in the cafe at my church that I am legitimately still terrified to hope that good things will happen.
(To me.)
And that controlling the hurt I encounter will make it hurt less.
I haven’t been feeling very brave lately. Or strong.
Or capable.
These words aren’t meant to strike pity or empathy.
They are literally just truth for me to begin to untangle whatever all this is from my clenched fists.
I think (I know) I’ve fallen back onto a pattern in which doing will get me out of being.
When I had to get taken care for a month last year, it was damn hard for me. Even amidst all that I was going through, I was still writing the menus for work, typing out notes for each and every day I was gone even though it physically made me ill to look at my phone.
When it feels like I’ve come so far from this place of doing as a personality trait I’ve realized it’s deeper and deeper.
That month of dizziness and being unable to move was the hardest month I’ve maybe ever had because if I can’t do then what am I.
So, today, I stare at my clenched fist.
I don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t know what I need to un-grip from.
I just know it’s there.
All the things amidst the grief, the pain, the things that don’t feel like hope but actually are.
And I know; none of this feels good.
The words would make my mom call me. Would cause people to feel like I’m worse off than I am.
But you know what; I’m still here.
And I’m choosing these words because right now in this world, this place we need to know that there are other people moving forward with us in the midst.
I never want to be a person who brings others into her distress, grief or pain.
I want you to know that amidst all of that you can live, you can have laughter and joy.
You can support people and make ordering McDonald’s on DoorDash something you do for the plot.
You can still have joy.
Amidst all this I may not have hope but you damn well better believe I have joy.
We have less than 60 days left in this year.
My word for the year was _______ again.
There are so many things I’ve had to do this year; again and again.
And damn it, I think I’m supposed to learn through these last two months of this year to hope again.
To believe that beautiful, bold, unattainably feeling things can happen for me.
Love, grace, bright spots of color.
I don’t know what else I need to un-grip from, but I do know that I’m supposed to un-grip my aggressive hold on hope and let it do its magic.
My friend Amanda told me I need to replace my hatred for October with cozy socks.
Well, basically.
I’ve never been a basic fall girl like my best friend Tori whose love for sweaters and spooky season has rubbed off a bit on me in the last nine years of living in Washington. She goes full send into seasons essentially just for herself and that’s something that I absolutely love about her. Her no holds barred ability to show her love of something. Even if that something is just spooky season.
It feels ironic and also kismet that her best friend hates fall.
For me; fall brings all the ghosts out that I tried to keep dormant for too long.
(And not the good ghosts like Devon Sawa as Casper.)
But in the fall the ghosts return full force and cause me to have panic attacks and try to sneak into my brain to tell me all the ways that this is how it always is.
It’s actually kind of funny. There are things to myself that I would absolutely never tell a tiny human. I was talking to my director last week about a few things and I said that the phrase I hate saying to tiny humans and to adults is simply “But you know better”. Because while tiny humans absolutely actually don’t, adults should.
But I still can’t bring myself to say it.
I also can’t ever bring myself to speaking over someone that “this is all there is”.
Myself though?
Fall is that reminder that the lie that says this is all there is might be true.
Fall tells me that the other shoe will drop. That I’m not strong enough.
Fall tells me I’m broken.
Fall has receipts.
That I’ll keep circling back to these ghosts because fall will inevitably create new ones.
But I should love fall.
Honestly.
I’m a whiskey drinker, cozy couch loving, preschool teacher who loves an excuse for product art and a writer.
So what the heck do I do?
I have to remember that I’m still here despite fall telling me I’m broken and alone.
Because I still show up in fall.
Eight days after my mom died I performed on a stage in front of an audience for the first time since high school. I was in a Halloween music review and the next day I got a plane to spend a week in Kingsburg leading up to my mom’s memorial.
There was no way I wasn’t getting on that stage.
I needed fall to be something more than what it was.
I needed something to remind me I could survive fall.
And now, I sit here, with an immensely clenched fist on my emotions, I realized I have survived fall.
Specifically, I have survived fall every year since 2008 when the words in my brain told me the world around me would be lighter without me.
I think sometimes when I write I need to remind myself that I’ve survived the things that I didn’t think I could.
I need to drag myself out of the hole that feels like I can’t do it.
I need to drag myself out of the hole that says this is all there is.
I need to gather the hope the falls before this has created.
I’ve lived a lot of life with the persistent fear that I’m letting people down.
And to be completely and utterly honest I’ve lived the last three years mostly with the gut wrenching fear that I’m letting my mom down with every step I take.
That I haven’t been strong enough, smart enough. That I’m not able to take care of myself.
That I’m not making her proud and that she’s be so disappointed in all the ways I’ve failed.
And I know that all sounds so heavy but if we don’t ever let the heavy things out than all we will do is let them continually weigh us down.
I feel as if I have a lot of evidence in my life of all the ways I’ve been chosen last, been written off a list, not been enough for the people I wanted to be enough for.
That I’m literally just right outside the map with no way if knowing how to be apart of the journey again.
When I was in Ecuador on one of the first days of the world race myself and my team of 6 other women were handed a map of how to get to where we needed to go.
The issue was the place we were and the place we were going weren’t actually on the map- the map was the middle.
We just had to choose to go off and get to the middle without actually having the tools.
And right now, in the moment, I feel like that again. Like I’m looking at a map and I have to get to the end without all the information.
And I feel like I’ve already failed.
I know it’s not true.
I know that I’m not always letting people down.
I know I’m not a last choice.
I know that no one actually has a complete map.
Lately, the heavy has been more heavy than I know what to do with.
And hope feels like fireworks in the distance that is gone in a flash.
But, if there is anything I know that is true it’s that we have to choose to face the lies and the words that go against who we are. We have to not be afraid of them.
We have to stare them in the face.
So that’s what I’m doing right now.
Staring the words in the face that become ticker tape on my brain sometimes.
Staring them in the face because the more I do the more I realize they are untrue.
Want to join me?
Want to stare the things in the face that feel so true until you realize they are mirage that flickers off in the distance?
And let’s replace it all with what is true and full of gritty steadfast hope.
It’s been a really hard place for me to be in. A place where I feel incapable of communicating or saying what I mean, or feel. I’m a writer who has spent most of her life using words that come out of my brain as a place to land. I’ve discovered more than I can even explain via my own writing. I’ve untangled, I’ve stared at words on the screen that I had no clue where they came from but just knew that they were true and real.
I’ve found the end of the rope through my words on more occasions than I can even count.
I’ve found hope in between the lines of my own writing because at the end of the day, when I write it, I know that it’s there. When I write something I know that there is something more in me, something I can grab on too.
Something that is more real than the things that feel dark.
But right now, there is none of that.
It feels like I’m standing in a hole and I have all the pieces to something that will help me out of the hole, but it’s a piece of Ikea furniture and I have no instruction and I don’t have that damn little tool to help me build it.
The only way out of the hole is to build it.
But, instead of building it, I’ve just sat there, not trying because right now it’s easier to stay in the hole than get hurt by the fall again.
Three years ago today I wrote that I was starting to not be afraid of the other shoe dropping.
And then a month later my mom died.
Now, I’m sitting here in this bar, writing these words feeling like I’m just throwing a pity party.
Because I know I’m strong enough to get out of the damn hole.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how my high school youth pastor used to talk about how it was better to be a Christian whose fire was completely out than a lukewarm Christian. I remember, like most things from high school youth group, feeling so incredibly ashamed of that. I remember thinking that I just had to stay “on fire”. I had to do all the things I needed to do. I had to show up, be everything. I needed to sing on the worship team, and go to every bible study.
I couldn’t let the fire die because than I would be less than.
But here I am over 20 years outside of high school youth group and I would like to call bullshit on my youth pastor.
I would much rather have some dying embers of faith than feel as if a wet towel had smothered all the flames.
At the beginning of this I said that I haven’t been able to write; that isn’t completely true. I have been writing.
The words have just all felt completely and utterly devoid of hope.
Which, I know isn’t true.
Because choosing to write is choosing to believe in the hope that there is something at the end of the words.
Choosing to write is choosing to believe I might be able to be a little stronger than I was before I started writing.
Choosing to write is choosing to believe even though I feel incapable of it; I’m still someone who has the ability to stir hope and light.
So, that’s it. That’s me right now.
I guess, that at the end of it all, I’m here with my hands open, being a little more honest than I want.
I feel absolutely unsettled by all of these words and normally that unsettledness would push me to not post them, to shut my computer, maybe to even delete them, but instead I’m choosing for a moment to lean in to the things that don’t feel settled in hopes that the action might help them settle.
In the last couple months I’ve started more blogs and more pieces of words than I care to admit.
I’ve absolutely written the things that I deem safe sans one collection of words back in June.
Ever since those words I’ve been afraid that anything I write about the dark things I feel would negate the words I wrote then, the things I know to be true. The light I know I am.
That me speaking of the things that have been hard would negate the things I know to be true.
I have had a lot of beautiful, sparkly moments this summer. Moments with friends where I belly laugh and sitting in the sun and enjoying every moment.
But, then there have been more moments than I can count that feel like depths I haven’t been to in awhile.
And that is really damn scary to say.
I’ve written in spaces that say I’ve moved past them but in reality the mornings I’ve been awake til 2 or 3 am and the days at work I’ve survived on 3-4 hours of sleep are more then I would care to admit.
When I was at camp and had spent an evening on the absolute verge of a panic attack and I admitted to it Susan one of our directors-she asked if I had a mantra, something to say that grounded me in the moments where I felt like I could keep my breath or my head out of the darkness.
I didn’t. But I came up with one.
I am here.
It’s a play off of the words of Hannah Brencher “be where your feet are”
My feet are here.
I am here.
Then there is this:
My word of the year this year is again.
And I’ve had to work really damn hard to not tack the word on the sentence: it’s 2009, again.
Because that’s honestly all that’s been in my brain. The recesses of my brain that hold dates and memories and pain just keep telling me that I must not be strong enough since I’m here, again.
I want you to know human being reading this that I know, in my absolute knower, that it’s not true.
I know I’m stronger, bolder, and so many things in between.
I know.
But, good god, I never want anyone to feel less than if they feel as if they’ve met the pages they’ve been in the book before.
Something a Nigerian med student told me in a small village on the border of Russia in Ukraine (it’s just a fun sentence I had to say) was that he was never going back to Nigeria. He wasn’t the same so he couldn’t go back, he was going forward to Nigeria.
I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like I’m going back.
I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that the strength I have will be diminished if I admit I’ve met some mountains that have to be climbed that just so happen to look foothills I’ve climbed before.
I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that people will think I’m a fraud that can’t just get over it.
I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like 2009 and I don’t want to live through that again.
But, when I silence myself I can’t get to the end of the sentence.
When I silence myself, you don’t have the space to get to the end of the sentence in your book,
The end of the sentence is this: it feels like 2009 again, but it’s not.
And if we don’t get to the “but” we can’t negate everything that came before it.
It feels like 2009 again, but I’m stronger.
It feels like 2009 again, but I’ve rebuilt and I will again.
It feels like 2009 again, but I am Meg in 2024.
I don’t know how you are silencing yourself.
I don’t know if you won’t let yourself get to the “but” that negates the thing that scares you that comes before it.
To get to the overcoming we have to get to the “but” in the sentence.
We have to change our language and our outlook.
I don’t know if you feel up for sharing the end of your sentence and if you do please drop it in the comments or shoot me a message.
Here’s mine (sorry for the language):
It feels like 2009 again but, for fucks sake I’m still here.
I deleted about 300 words that I wrote yesterday because I knew in my knower that I wasn’t actually typing what was true.
Well, it was true but it wasn’t it. It wasn’t the thing that I needed to be saying for myself at the beginning of this new year.
I didn’t need to start with all the ways in which I’ve always felt less than.
I didn’t need to start “used to be”.
Years ago a mentor was asking me questions about journaling and I stated that I don’t journal when I don’t want to face the thing that I already know.
I absolutely know what’s at the end of this; but I absolutely don’t want to see it in writing.
I’ve always been…scratch that.
I’m currently working on letting go of the constant fear that I’m too much.
And it’s really hard.
I’ve spent a very long time checking over my shoulder, backspacing over words, regretting input I’ve given, questioning my abilities and wondering if I’m allowed space in the places I inhabit.
Now, there’s a lot of reasons and a lot of situations and a lot of times where those things have been proved correct in my head.
But, (it should be noted how long I’m waiting to type the next words) today, at one of my favorite little bars, I’m choosing to say that those narratives and those people and those situations no longer have the ability to take my voice, my abilities or inhabit the spaces I should be in.
And if you ever want to know those things, or people or stories, I can share, but it won’t be from anything but a place of storytelling not situations that hold me back.
Because I’m not going to tiptoe around the things that make me who I am, that I’m good at.
I think it’s time I don’t shrink back anymore.
It’s time to unravel and undo the things that have caused me to keep a distance.
Today, I decide, to no longer be hesitant in being the first person to believe in myself.
I’ve ebbed and flowed in my faith so much in the last 10-11 years. After the World Race my life was in a tailspin. I didn’t know what way was up and I wasn’t sure what the point of the previous year of my life had been.
I had been sold this notion that following the “calling of God” was going to bring me to an answer, to a level of contentment in the midst. That it would bring me to wholeness.
All it brought me was sadness, confusion and one of the deeper lonely times I had ever encountered. I felt so, so lost and it was incredibly hard to explain that to people who assumed I had just had the best year of my life. Which the year had been beautiful and amazing- but there was also a lot of hard things.
I went to Spain and picked up some pieces, I found some footing I had lost and then I moved to Bellingham. It was in the beginning of my time in Bellingham that I wrote a piece for a website and realized that all of the things I had caused me to want to wash my hands of all the things that were faith had nothing to actually do with God.
They had to do with the way people manipulated words and phrases and ideology, they had to do with religion and law and everything in between.
Today I came to the realization that somewhere along the way my deconstruction turned to reconstruction.
I’ve worked really hard in this process of letting go of the things I don’t need, of taking the things apart to see how the work or how they started in my life in regards to faith, and of not throwing everything away because the water it lived in got murky.
It felt really important to me to not throw it all out.
I couldn’t throw it all out.
There are a few moments in my life that I can only affix to God. And in all honesty it’s those moments that anchor me and caused me to deconstruct this house I built over the span of 20+ years down to only its foundation- because the foundation made sense.
But now, it’s time to put some things back together.
And I know it doesn’t look like that on the outside. I never truly stopped going to church, but I’ve taken breaks and had seasons and spans where I don’t feel connected. It probably looks as if I never did any construction- because my deconstructing doesn’t look like someone else’s.
But part of my deconstructing was choosing to believe that this foundation I stood on was still stable enough to rebuild. And choosing to believe that those moments affixed to God would still be there even if I decided to never set foot in a church again.
And it was actively understanding that the shame I felt when it all fell apart wasn’t from God. It wasn’t some enemy or a spirit or anything intangible.
It was the people who decided what church and men and women in the church should look like.
It was the house they built that made you feel crazy- with doors that led to nowhere even though they told you the door led somewhere.
It’s the institution that told me I was never enough, never whole enough or holy enough or did enough.
I still have a very hard time going back into spaces that are like all of the spaces that told me those things. I have a hard time coming to grasp with words that have been used so wrong I forgot how to read them how they should be read.
What I’ve realized though is the spaces that need my voice and viewpoint the most are most likely the spaces where I know the language needs to change.
The places where I inwardly gag are the places that I need to help make good and real again.
All I want for anyone who interacts with me, is to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are loved. That what they have other people need.
And if all those people never set foot in a church; who cares.
If they know someone loves them, and that some believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone believes that they have things to give the world- that’s what matters to me.
If all I am is a picture that not all people go to church are judgmental and uncaring- that’s what matters to me.
That’s why I’m choosing to rebuild again.
It’s not to save anyone, it’s not to evangelize, it’s not shame anyone for not doing it.
It’s just to rebuild myself and my faith with the things I want to keep. It’s changing the narrative and the words and the tone.
It’s being a home for others when they need it.
A safe space.
And it’s recreating the things that brought me to the deconstruction and it’s making them be safe again as well.
So, I’ll just be here, still really hating women’s ministries, all religious language and anything that feels even an ounce like shame.
